JPMorgan's first-quarter profit falls

NEW YORK - JPMorgan Chase (JPM), the country's biggest bank by assets, says earnings fell in the first three months of the year.

The bank made $4.8 billion in the first quarter, after stripping out payments to preferred stockholders. That was down 20 percent from the same period a year earlier, when it made $6.1 billion. On a per-share basis, that amounted to $1.28. That was worse than estimates of analysts polled by FactSet, who had been expecting $1.39.

Revenue was $22.9 billion. That was down 8 percent from the same period last year when the bank generated revenue of $25.1 billion. Shares are down $1.10, or 2 percent, at $56.11 in pre-market trading.

JPMorgan's investment banking and trading revenue was lower than expected, Jefferies analysts said. The bank's first quarter "was clearly slower from an activity perspective due to capital markets uncertainty and potentially the weather," they said in a research note.